


Secrets

by crying_puddles



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: A Nora tragic backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Past Character Death, Past Sexual Abuse, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:20:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28906266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crying_puddles/pseuds/crying_puddles
Summary: Nora and June are hanging out at a hotel during the campaigning for Ellen's first term, and the subject turns to secrets. After a little bit drinking and a little bit of prodding, Nora tells June about something that happened years ago that has to do with her older brother. The older brother that died when she was twelve.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based on some of my own experiences and apparently I'm using the project it onto fictional characters method of therapy. Just a short little story. Mind the tags. Hope you enjoy, I guess.

Nora pulls her unruly dark curls into a knot at the back of her head and leans around the doorway into the blissfully air conditioned hotel room. Small beads of sweat have gathered on her forehead and at the back of her neck through the immense amount of make-up the team had forced her into for the day of meeting potential voters. She’d much rather have stayed inside and dealt with more numbers, putting data through programs to figure out which demographics would benefit the most from direct campaigning. But Ellen had practically forced Alex to take a break, and June was less of a speech giving person and more of a writing one, so Nora conceded to stepping up. The reception hadn’t been terrible. It looked like this district could flip in their favor.

Footsteps thunder behind Nora. She jolts out of her head just in time to jump back from the doorway before June comes plowing through, her sight blocked by a massive box in her arms.

“Jesus Christ.”

June places the box at the base of the desk with a thud, panting. “Oh, Nora, sorry about that. Pamphlets and stuff.”

“It’s okay.” Nora crosses the room and flops backwards onto one of the beds, her back and shoulders immediately releasing a little bit of tension.

With a bit of a sigh, Juna follows suit. For a second, they just lay there in silence, thinking, but not about anything particularly important.

Nora places her palm up to her cheek, raising herself onto her elbow so that she can look over at June lying face planted on the cool hotel sheets. “What,” she stage-whispers, “is your deepest darkest secret.”

A low laugh fills the room. June rolls over, almost to the point of falling off the bed. “I’m not very good at secrets to be honest.”

“And why is that?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s just that nothing interesting enough happens to me to make me need to keep secrets.”

“‘ _ Nothing interesting happens to me’  _ says the girl who’s mom is going to be the first woman president of the United Fucking States.” Nora gives her a little smile that tells June she understands, even if she’s making fun.

“Don’t jinx it.”

“I don’t jinx things, the numbers are in our favor.”

“For now.”

“Wow, if I’m not allowed to jinx things, you’re not allowed to be a fucking pessimist.”

They fall back into silence. June takes note of how comfortable this is. She’s never usually very good at just existing around another person.

“What about you?” she asks softly.

Nora, who’d lowered herself back down onto her back and was staring at the ceiling, sits up. “Huh?”

“What’s your  _ deepest darkest secret?”  _

“Oh.” She stares at June’s face for a second before scooting back until her spine hits the pillows along the headboard. “Well. It wouldn’t be a secret if I told someone, would it?”

After a second, June forces out a laugh and says “Yeah”. She shouldn’t push it, whatever it is. And to be fair, it isn’t as if she hadn’t dodged the question herself. 

Tension has gathered in the room, and June finds herself wishing she had not asked. Averting her eyes from where Nora sits, she walks over to the desk and plugs in her phone, pressing the volume all the way up. Music starts blaring, swallowing up the space in a heavy bassline that forces the girl’s hearts to thump along.

June holds out her hand to Nora. They’ve both already begun to bob their heads, and she accepts gratefully, ready to be swung off the mattress and onto the narrow space between the beds that quickly becomes their dance floor.

At some point, out of breath and shiny with sweat, June pulls an unopened bottle of rum from the mini fridge. Nora raises an eyebrow.

“Wow I have to say I didn’t expect  _ you  _ to be the Claremont-Diaz kid to bring hard liquor on the road.”

June winks, pouring about a shot worth of the auburn liquid into two paper cups. “Alex won’t notice it’s missing.”

Nora tosses her’s back, full on grinning now. “She steals her brother’s booze and encourages underage drinking. The papers would shit themselves.”

“Well then,” breathes June, as she rocks forward and reaches around Nora from behind to refill her cup. “We’d better keep this a  _ secret _ .”

For a second, Nora stares at the rum pouring into the cup, absolutely still. The energy in the room turns just a little cold. June wants to kick herself again.

But instead of exploding or running off, or acting like nothing’s wrong as the world slowly collapses around her, Nora pulls her knees into her chest. She slides to the other side of the bed, away from June’s body heat.

“I’m sure somebody told you about my brother.” The words are pinched, like Nora’s vocal chords have turned brittle.

It takes June a second to remember, but she does, because of course she’d heard. Alex must have mentioned it offhandedly when he was going down the list of democratic opponents and finding out as much about them as he could. Mike Holleran’s grandson, Nora’s older brother, died in a car accident when he was sixteen. Nora would have been twelve. She can’t believe this is the first time it’s come up.

June gives a slight nod, not trusting herself with words.

Nora nods back, staring just past June’s head at nothing. “For weeks before he died, I had the same dream. I would be lying in the dark on a bed wearing flannel pajamas, a thin sheet on top of me. And Mason would be next to me. He’d—he’d reach over, and pull up my shirt. And his fingers were so cold. So  _ fucking  _ cold. And then, then he—” She breaks off. June almost reaches over, almost hugs Nora’s too taught shoulders. “He touched me, just with the tips of his fingers, like he was tickling but too lightly. He’d run his fingers over my side, and, and, my chest, which wasn’t that developed yet but there was something there. 

“And I kept pushing him away, plunging my nails into his palm. But he always came back, his hands freezing. And then he’d go lower. It went the same way every time. He’d run his fingers over my hip, lightly squeeze the fat on there, and before he could do anything more, I’d be on top of him. I put my hands up to his neck, and his skin there was cold too. I could feel his heartbeat against my fingers, and it all seemed so real. And I held them there while he took silent, horrible gasps. I held there until they stopped. His eyes would flutter shut, his pulse would cut out. Then his voice, painfully loud, would scream in my ears “Monster”. And I’d wake up.”

June stares at her. She has no idea what the fuck she’s supposed to say after that. She’s pretty sure no one would have any idea what to say after that. And she doesn’t quite understand why this fits in, why the dreams happened in the first place—though of course she can make some guesses.

“I know,” Nora looks at her. “You’re probably right, you know, with whatever you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Yes you were, it’s how the brain works. You try to make sense of information that you don’t understand. You come up with theories. Our greatest gift is our curiosity, our need for answers.” She lets the pause linger. June inclines her head and waits. “Everything that I told you just then, well, everything except the ending happened about a year before his death. Twice, actually. Two nights in a row, at a hotel over Thanksgiving break at the Grand Canyon. After the first night, I told myself I would tell my mom if it happened again. I distinctly remember thinking I had been dreaming. On the second morning I didn’t say anything, and that night I slept in a separate blanket on top of the sheets. He never touched me like that again.”

Now, June gives into her need to comfort, curls into Nora’s side. The warmth is bliss.

“I… I never told anyone about that. Not ever.” It’s then that Nora realizes she’s crying. Her cheeks are painted with streaky tears. Her lungs shudder when she inhales, and she thinks she might have been holding her breath. “But I—it’s stupid, it doesn’t make any sense, so don’t like call me crazy, I know it’s crazy. But I’ve always had this thought that those dreams made it happen. That somehow I put enough energy into the world, that somehow I told the universe I wanted him dead enough times that he died.”

Nora turns around and looks June directly in the eyes. Her own are puffy and red, and June can’t help but think that she looks a bit terrifying.

“But, but the thing is, I didn’t even want him to die, not really. I wasn’t fucking relieved when that asshole rammed his car into the dusty blue Honda that never got cleaned, and pieces of metal found their way into my brother’s chest. And I wished I could hate him more, for those months before it. I wished that I wasn’t happy when he took me to get ice cream after school, because fucking hell he gave me  _ nightmares every fucking night.  _ But I didn’t hate him and I  _ didn’t want him to fucking die.” _

A dam breaks, and Nora sobs, holding onto the fabric of June’s tank top for dear life. She sobs and sobs and sobs, until she’s puking in the hotel toilet with tears still rolling down her cheeks.

It’s around three in the morning when June feels Nora stop shuddering next to her on the bed, her breaths evening out and deeping. She runs her fingers lightly through Nora’s dark brown curls, slow and careful. Before her own eyelids flutter shut, June plants a kiss of the back of Nora’s head and whispers, so softly she barely hears herself.

“I’ll take care of you.”

Nora doesn’t need an older sister that often, but when she does, when the exams get stressful or November comes around again, she has a place to curl up in June’s arms. And June finds she sometimes has room to worry about two wild little siblings instead of one.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love comments if you feel like leaving one.


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